Peoria surgeries seen live in Las Vegas

Friday

Sep 26, 2008 at 12:01 AMSep 26, 2008 at 8:16 PM

Quiet on the set . . . and lights, camera, scalpel! A team of doctors and other medical workers at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center turned two operating rooms into quasi-television sets Thursday featuring scrubs-wearing cameramen and microphones alongside sterilized catheters and monitors.

Frank Radosevich II

Quiet on the set . . . and lights, camera, scalpel!

A team of doctors and other medical workers at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center turned two operating rooms into quasi-television sets Thursday featuring scrubs-wearing cameramen and microphones alongside sterilized catheters and monitors.

The doctors performed five vascular surgical procedures as cameras showcased their work via satellite to an international medical conference in Las Vegas. St. Francis was one of five U.S. hospitals transmitting live cases to the conference.

The taping was a chance to teach the medical community about new, upcoming techniques and tools used in the operating room, said Dr. Kenneth Moresco, an interventional radiologist at Central Illinois Radiological Associates.

"It allows a forum for the physicians to interact with the audience," Moresco said. "It's a teaching tool to sort of augment the lectures that are being given down there for the participants."

Physicians attending the conference from across the country and beyond watched snippets of the roughly hourlong operations. The Peoria doctors, wired with microphones and earpieces, described and commented on what they were doing and responded to questions and comments. Patients are sedated for the surgery, their faces covered and identities kept vague.

Joe Kneip, an angiography technician at St. Francis, said finding patients ready for their close-up is usually a simple task.

"It's a lot of fun for the patients because they feel like, hey this is a big deal," he said.

The taping is not the hospital's first, considering doctors filmed procedures in the past for conferences in Chicago. But broadcasting live from the OR still helps keep health care workers on their toes.

"Our techs are used to high-stress situations," Kneip added.

During one live broadcast on Thursday, the audience and the operating room doctors watched the removal of a cone-shaped filter placed in a patient's large vein. In the past, the filter - used to catch blood clots before they reach the lungs - would sit in the vein permanently. Now, doctors have the option of snaring and retrieving the filter after the threat of any serious illness has passed.

The live procedures continue a long medical tradition and allow for instant questions and comments, a process better than watching a filmed procedure, doctors said. Physicians can focus on direct images from computer screens and the multiple camera angles instead of crowding around a small operating table while donning hospital gowns.

"They probably get a better view in the audience than someone would have looking over a shoulder," Moresco said.

Frank Radosevich II can be reached at (309) 686-3142 or fradosevich@pjstar.com.

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